Wormholes

Corp security hasn't really ever been an issue for me. If something went missing, i could literally, go and find the guy who did it and punch him in the face. Thats the benefit of playing eve with friends, you know where they live. I've always thought it alot safer to play with people you know and trust, because lets face it, eve is full of dicks.

So when i decided to open up of membership, and let people come and join us in wh-space, i started to consider the issue of POS security. How can individuals work together from a POS, whilst keeping their individual assets safe and seperate? Lots of head-scratching and iconic beard-thinking followed. Eventually, we decided to sidestep the issue by setting up a second POS, whilst keeping ours with a shield password. This effectively shifted the problem to any of our new players, but kept my friends happy because they know for sure their shiny stuff is safe.

So following a period of experimentation, and further research, we adopted the "each player has a seperate tab" tactic. This effectively allows each player to have a safe and secure space to store things. The limitation is that you'd only be able to have 7 players.

This did not however, solve the issue with the ship maintenace array. Being that its just a floating box is space, where everyones ships are stored, it represents a significant security risk. If its there, and you can fly it, its yours for the taking. This brings me neatly back to "Eve is full of dicks". Eventually, perhaps even inevitably, someone was tempted to take the easy path to the darkside, and steal the lot. It was a grim time for my corp, with a period of accusations, misplaced blame and suspicion. But now with the thief identified, we can breathe a sigh of relief, and try to learn from the experience. Luckily, this inncident led one of my members to realise that as long as you are not in your pod, ships could be moved from the maintenace array directly into their tab. When needed they could be moved back before being boarded. The maintenace array and hanger obviously need to be anchored close to eachother for this to work. Effectively, ships could be stored safely in individuals tabs, safely out of reach of potential stealing scum. Corp hangers probably wont handle this level of space-requirement, so i'd recommend a large assembly array instead! Hopefully, this should elliminate the risk of theft in the future.

After asking advice from a number of players in wh-space (thanks to all), I learned that more than 7 players can be achieved with multiple towers, with 7 players per tower. As long as each tower is passworded, and that password is absolutely kept a secret between those 7 players, then multiple players can share the same tab in the corp interface. So for instance if you had two towers, then you're going to have 2 players sharing each of the 7 tabs. As long as the passwords to the shields are kept strictly seperate, then either side cannot access the other. They may have access to eachothers tab, but without the shield password, they wont get anywhere near where the stuff actually is.

If the password is leaked, then your tab is only vunerable to the individual sharing it, unless the password is passed around, which would be bad. Even so, this is an effective method to have more than 7 players in a wormhole, and as long as the passwords are kept secret, things should be ok.

There is a further level of security possible, utilizing the "starbase fuel tech" role to create hangers/storage off-limits to those without the role, probably best saved for trusted members.

This has been a long journey of learning and experimentation to me, and i hope now my corporation is safer from the darker players in eve. Lets face it, the corporation interface is a bit of a nightmare, takes ages to get to grips with, and is generally very unhelpful. I'm told unconditionally that these issues are just "the tip of the iceburg", and that alliances are the ones that shoulder the majority of pain from the painful lack of POS security. I continue to hope that CCP gives this issue the full attention it needs to make things simpler for players to get along and work together, safe in the knowledge that someone isn't going to steal their stuff.

So, Lessons learned:

• Individual tab for each member
• Individuals store assembled ships in their tab
• 7 players per POS, with strictly seperate passwords
• Tiered security levels with fuel tech role, for an additional level of security
• Most important of all, API check the crap out of all new applicants

I hope this helps someone else avoid this happening to them.

Having only read the bulletpoints (only just got up, hangover / lazyness), you seem to be overcomplicating things. Let each person have their own POS (provided there are enough moons). They haul in a small personal pos, you anchor and online it and set their choice of password, then they are responsible for keeping it fuelled and alive (roles to add fuel but not remove it). Worked very well for more than a year for me.

You have one corp deathstar as a fall back position (directors can even keep their own stuff in that in locked down arrays) and people you dont trust 100% can only get access to their own personal assets. If they cba / forget to fuel it, then its only their own goodies hanging in space.

Theres probably a few more details i cant remember in my current befuddled state, but it works and takes the emphasis off you to keep things secure, all you need to do is online a new tower every once in a while.

People DO realize, I hope, that reducing the chance of corp-theft just makes WH a lot less 'hardcore'.

Horrendous corp asset management certainly is one of the factors keeping a lot of WH-corps small and focused.

As everyone else said its the only way to have 100+ people you cant go punch in the face living in the same hole, logicically its a nightmare but hey new pos systems soon™. But having said that you still get them them time to time, the key is damage limitation if all they can steel is 1bills worth of mods/ships and there making that and more running sites then you see less thefts.

Solid write up.

CCP doesn't seem to care about its W-Space people, this is good and bad. Bad because they don't sort out alliance bookmarks, pos security and a ******** directional scan interface. Good because they don't seem to realize exactly how much money expo holes pull in, for as little work as they require.

I'll take the good with the bad, lets not newb-ify w-space... next thing someone will ask for is "local chat char tags" in w-space.